March 13, 2026

9:30 - 11:30 am (PST)

Online Training, 2 CE's

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This WILL be recorded and you will be able to get CE's after you fill out the survey and take a short quiz (if you don't attend in person)

 

Culturally-Affirming Boundary Setting: Clinical Guidance on Working with First and Second Gen Clients of Color

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Presentation Overview

Culturally Affirming Boundary Setting with First- and Second-Generation Clients is a continuing education workshop that invites clinicians to re-examine how boundary setting is commonly taught and practiced through dominant Western, individualistic frameworks. While these models often emphasize autonomy, separation, and individuation, they can be misaligned—or even harmful—when applied to clients from immigrant and collectivist family systems, where relational identity, interdependence, hierarchy, high-context communication, and concrete caregiving and survival needs shape family life. This training encourages clinicians to move beyond a one-size-fits-all definition of “healthy boundaries” and to explore how boundaries function within collectivist, intergenerational, and migration-shaped contexts.

Using a culturally responsive and trauma-informed lens, participants will learn to support clients in identifying boundaries that feel right for them—rooted not in opposition to their culture, but in relationship with it. The workshop explores cultural understandings of self and community, family roles and hierarchies, systemic pressures, and survival-based expectations that influence boundary decisions for first- and second-generation clients. Clinicians will gain practical, culturally attuned strategies and language to help clients set boundaries that preserve dignity, connection, and cultural integrity, with an emphasis on flexibility, values alignment, and relational attunement that honors both individual well-being and collective belonging.

 

Learning Objectives

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

a. Identify four core principles of culturally affirming boundary setting with first- and second-generation clients.
b. Describe four culturally congruent ways boundaries may be set within collectivist and immigrant family systems.
c. Explain three ways traditional Western boundary models may be misapplied or harmful when working with immigrant families.
d. Recognize four ways clinicians’ own cultural conditioning, training, countertransference, and values may be activated during boundary-setting work.

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About the presenter:

Pauline Yeghnazar Peck, MA, LMFT, PhD - Licensed Psychologist

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Dr. Pauline Yeghnazar Peck is a first generation Iranian-Armenian trauma-informed psychologist who specializes in working with the children of immigrants and intercultural couples. She focuses on the ways that culture impacts mental health, supporting clients in actively engaging with the goodness available in their culture while also doing the work of breaking cycles of intergenerational trauma. She operates a group practice in California called Noor Therapy and Wellness specializing in providing culturally-informed, trauma-informed care for children of immigrants/BIPOC folks, as well as provides coaching, speaking, consulting, and community education through her company Bridging Gaps, Breaking Cycles. 

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